Friday, February 27, 2015

Guns and Gear Review # 17: Glock 21 Gen 4 and Ruger 10/22

Hey folks, your old pal 12-Gauge Chimp here with another Two for One Special review.

I've been kind of neglecting the site a bit, but I'm back with some new things to review and I'll be sure to have some more reviews coming in the future.

The first thing I'm going to review is my brand new Glock 21 .45 ACP caliber handgun.

Since buying my Rock Island Armory 1911 (which has since been sold to a family member), I was in the market for a new .45 ACP pistol. I went back and forth between various brands and something about the Glock 21 caught my attention. I called several shops in my area and a local hardware store had the best price and actually had the gun in stock. The other shops would've had to order the gun and wait several days to get it in my hands. One shop had an insanely high price tag on the gun in addition to the wait. Seriously, that shop wanted more than MSRP (manufacturers suggested retail price) by about 200 dollars. Let's just say they won't be getting my business any time soon. So, I went into the local shop and filled out the required paperwork for the Feds. Twenty minutes later, I was walking out of the store with my shiny new Glock 21. This is my first Glock pistol and probably won't be my last. Glock recently released a long slide variant called the Glock 41 and I'm considering picking one of those up as well.

Getting to the gun itself, the Glock 21 feels a lot better in my hands than my RIA 1911 did and I think it's because of the wider grip. I had to put thicker grips on my 1911 to have it fit better, but the G21 fits me nearly perfectly right out of the box. The Gen 4 models come with four interchangeable back straps and I ended up putting the medium beaver tail back strap on my particular gun. I figured since I have large hands that the large one would fit me the best, but it wasn't true. The medium fit me the best and it'll stay on the gun for awhile. Magazines drop free from the mag well easily and that's great for making quick reloads at the range. The sights are typical Glock style, which are plastic, and are one thing that I kind of dislike. I mean, is that hard for Glock to include metal sights on their guns ? I'm sure the sights are durable enough, but I'd like to see an option for metal sights in the future. I'll probably be replacing the factory sights with night sights soon, so it's not that big of a deal for me to have them on my G21 for the moment. The gun came with a total of three 13 round magazines and I ended up purchasing a few more at another store. It's always a good idea to have a decent supply of magazines in case one decides to fail. Factory mags are a little high in price, but they're solid. I know I could go the cheap route and buy some of those Korean made Glock magazines that were brought in a few years back, but I've heard really bad things about their quality. So, it'll be factory magazines for me and my G21.

All in all, I like the Glock 21. I'm hoping to get out to the range once the weather heats up a little and put the gun through its paces.

Speaking of guns, it's time for the second half of this Two for One Special. The Ruger 10/22.

I've been in the market for a new .22LR rifle ever since I got my Mossberg 702 awhile back. Now, the 702 Plinkster by Mossberg is a good little gun, but the lack of aftermarket parts and accessories severely limit it. I probably should've bought a Ruger 10/22 in the first place, but the store I bought my Mossberg from didn't have any at the time. So I bought the 702 Plinkster. Cut to last year when I found myself at a Wal-Mart in Odessa Texas and there on the shelf was a Ruger 10/22 with a stainless steel barrel. I looked it over and handed it back to the nice lady behind the counter. I thought about it for a bit and decided I'd go ahead with the purchase. Being that the store had several of that style in stock, I ended up with a fresh one and not the one that had been handled by who knows how many people. The gun I looked at first had a minor issue with the magazine sticking, but that's mostly due to the synthetic stock being a bit tight in the magwell area. My 10/22 had the same issue, but I ended up swapping out the factory stock for a Hogue stock that's so much better than the factory one. Swapping the stock for an aftermarket one solved the issue with sticking mags. I had bought a Blackhawk Axiom stock for it previously, but I ended up with a stock that was poorly molded and off center by a very noticeable degree. So I went with the Hogue stock instead and haven't had any issues with that one. My gun came with a single 10 round magazine, but I purchased a couple of the BX-25 magazines Ruger has brought to the market in the past few years. These are factory made 25 round magazines and they have been getting great reviews from shooters like myself. Ruger also makes a BX-50 with is basically two BX-25 magazines molded together. They sort of look like someone took two BX-25 magazines and duct taped them together, to be honest.

2014 was the 50th anniversary of the 10/22 and all guns made that year had the 50th anniversary roll mark on the receiver, barrel and bolt. Ruger even had a design contest for a special edition rifle to commemorate the occasion. I'm actually trying to track down one of those rifles because it's such a cool little gun and incorporates a few features that I really like.

Now, I have yet to get out to the range and fully test these guns out, but rest assured that I will and that I will give you all a full range report afterwards. Actually, come to think of it, there's a bunch of stuff I've purchased recently that I need to get out and test.

It's a bit too early for me to give either gun my seal of approval, so check back within the next six months time and I'll update the site with my findings.

As always this is 12-Gauge Chimp signing off.